by Ray Connolly
Music.
In the end, sleepy again and a little drunk, she nearly missed what she looking for. It came in the form of some faded notes scribbled in the margin of a section on religious superstition. “Heavens Gate, Branch Davidians and Jonestown cults,” her father had written. Then further down the page: “Leaders facing personal crises.”
She recognised the names: Heaven’s Gate were the group of people in California who believed that an alien spaceship was following the Hale-Bopp comet in 1997; while the Branch Davidians were the followers of David Koresh who had died at the siege in Waco, Texas. All were modern sects, or cults, with charismatic leaders.
“Cult!” Greg had used the word flippantly as the tabloid Press did to describe almost any group of nonconformist people, and at the time she’d mentally resisted it.
But now a question was begging to be answered. At what point, if ever, could fan devotion turn into a cult?
Chapter Thirty Five
October 29:
The white painted Victorian building in Smithfield lay at the end of an alley between the back of a Turkish restaurant and a clothes warehouse. With her canvas bag over her shoulder, Kate addressed an assortment of bells alongside a locked door, then pressed the one marked “Mount Venus”. The door buzzed open immediately, and she made her way up three flights of stairs and to the end of a corridor. A door swung open at her knock.
The girl was black with bright red lips. Wearing white stockings, a white lace suspender belt and nothing else, she was swinging gently back and forth in a white hammock. The man, white but tanned chestnut and dressed in an ice-cream linen suit with neither shirt, shoes nor socks, was watching her through a large gilt picture frame. The girl bit into a ripe cherry, and then sucked the juice as it oozed on to her fingers. Slipping off his jacket the man, now naked from the waist up, stepped through the frame into the picture, and...
The image froze.
"I think that's about enough of a tease, don't you?" Frank Teischer grinned all the way from his oval, pink face to the back of his bald head, and swivelled his chair away from a very large computer screen.
Kate smiled: "Well, it does it for me.”
"Welcome to Mount Venus, Kate! I thought you'd like to see how much more fun I'm having now than when I was cutting news at WSN." And, with a nod to the screen, the film editor closed the programme. "That was one of the Awakening Virgins you were looking at, by the way. Perhaps not everyone’s idea of a sweet young virgin, but there we are, she’s the star of our film. Not bad when a man's hobby becomes his job, eh!"
“Not bad at all, Frank. It’s good to see you.” Kate had always liked Frank Teischer, and she couldn't help feeling sorry for him. He was an old lech, and had been pushed out of WSN for coming on to Hilly Weston, but he'd always been jokey, never embarrassing, and he'd been a brilliant, supportive editor.
"Anyway,” he said, pulling up a chair for her, “you say you’re looking for an editor to work on a little bio-pic. Anyone interesting?”
She told him.
He looked neither shocked nor disbelieving. A career cutting news footage had immured him to surprise. "So I take it this stuff shows Jesse Gadden in a light less than favourable.”
"He might think so.”
“Splendid! Let’s see what you’ve got.”
Opening her bag she passed him the material she’d shot in Ireland and America. “If it’s okay with you I’ll have the ITN Archive material delivered here, too.”
“Fine, if you don't mind your stuff nestling alongside the Awakening Virgins. I know it isn't usual, but it's warm and secret and..."
For the first time in days, Kate found herself laughing as he hammed up his reputation. "All right, all right. Wide awake or fast asleep, virgins or otherwise will be fine with me.” She took his hand. “Thanks, Frank. You’re a good friend.”
Teischer’s brave-face crumpled. "Thank you, Kate, for giving me some real work to do. It means a lot.”
Jeroboam didn’t have a mobile, so she called his home number as she walked back to her car. He was out, but his mother told her where to find him. On the late shift at the hotel, he’d gone to a street market near to his home to do some shopping for her.
She saw him before he saw her, the lonely boy taking his mother’s task seriously, paying for some plums at a fruit stall, feeling for the firmest before he took them. He smiled, more confident than usual, when he spotted her approaching. “You’ve had a haircut. It looks good.”
“Thank you,” she said, although she wasn’t sure that it did.
“You got my messages?” He was beaming.
“Yes. But, Jeroboam, I need your help.”
“What?”
“It’s about Jesse Gadden!”
His face fell.
“You told me he had scary eyes. What did you mean exactly?"
Jeroboam screwed up his face, and too late she realised he’d been expecting her to ask him about his job.
“I dunno,” he said, and turned away.
She moved closer to him. “I’m sorry. We’ll talk about other things later. But this is important. Why do you think his eyes are scary?”
He shrugged unhappily. “He looks like he thinks things," he mumbled at last. "As though he could do things…like…in the night..."
"What kind of things?"
"Creepy things." Then, facing her, he raised his voice. “Why d’you want to know about him, anyway? Do you fancy him or something?"
Surprised by his outburst, a woman passing by with two small children in a double buggy carefully avoided going too close to him.
Kate was shocked. He'd never spoken to her like that before.
The boy’s bravura shattered as he saw her expression, and he walked hurriedly away through the crowds.
She followed.
Stopping by a second hand clothes stall, he turned back to her. "I’m sorry, Kate.”
“That’s all right.”
“It's just that I don't like to think of you being with him, of him doing things to you..."
She understood. He was growing up. “Oh, Jeroboam…”
"Cold," he said suddenly, wanting to help now. "He makes me feel like I'm cold and want to shiver. And I don't like to look in his face in case he looks at me.”
"You mean, you feel as though he's watching you when he's on television?"
"Yes. And now on the internet on the computer you bought me. Especially on the internet. He's always there, watching me. And it's too cold."
She looked at him. "Thanks, Jeroboam," she said softly. "That's terrific. You know, I’m so pleased for you and your job, but…I’ve been having a difficult time." She hesitated, as some shoppers pushed past. "And the answer is, ‘No, I don't fancy him’. I was wrong about him. You were right not to like him." And she found herself putting a hand on his sleeve.
Jeroboam flushed, and glanced around to make sure no-one on the street had noticed.
“Look, I have to go and see someone now. But I’m really glad you like being at the hotel. I got your messages. We’ll get together and you can tell me about it just as soon as I can sort a couple of things out. Promise.”
They were waiting on her doorstep, Cotton, the younger of the two Kentish Town detectives, and a uniformed woman colleague with a crooked smile.
She led them inside. "Would you like something to drink?" she asked as they reached her sitting room.
The officers shook their heads, the policewoman looking around at the paintings Kate had bought off street artists in Africa and South America.
Kate waited. No one spoke. "Look, I'm not sure of the form here,” she said at last, “but am I allowed to ask if you've interviewed anyone belonging to the Jesse Gadden organisation?"
"We've talked to a number of people as part of our enquiries into the death of Gregory Passfield," Cotton came back.
"And...?"
"Investigations are still proceeding."
"Right!” That was that. “So, what can I do to hel
p you?"
"You can help us because we've had a complaint about you.”
“What?”
"...from lawyers acting for a lady called Petra Kerinova. I understand you know her."
She looked at them. "Go on."
"Actually the lady contacted Chelsea CID, but in view of the circumstances there was a bit of liaising and we thought it would be better if we had a word with you ourselves."
She could feel the ground tilting. "And the nature of the complaint?"
Cotton produced a typed sheet, which he glanced at as he spoke. "Miss Kerinova's lawyers say that Mr Jesse Gadden feels that you've become obsessed with him to a degree unacceptable in a reporter or a normal fan, and that you've been stalking him and pestering some of his old colleagues and acquaintances as well as harassing and embarrassing him by playing loud music outside his house.”
“You’re serious?” she said.
“This is the complaint we’ve had.”
Neat, she thought. Her indignation was rasping but she needed time to think.
"We understand you've been suspended from your job at WSN…” the policewoman said.
She didn’t like the way that had been phrased. “Not exactly suspended. It was agreed that it would be inappropriate for me to be seen on television…in view of what happened to…”
The police woman nodded over-sympathetically. "Look, we know you had a bad experience abroad. I saw it on the television. And then the shock of...of finding your friend. I wasn’t on duty that night, but I believe it was very upsetting. These things can often take a little while to get over..."
Cotton came in. "But you can't go around harassing people."
That was enough. "I’m not harassing anybody. I might almost say the reverse is true.”
“You mean, Jesse Gadden is stalking you?” Cotton almost smirked.
“Jesus! A young man bleeds to death in his bath and all you can do is lecture me on some trivial trumped up pretext…”
"A crime is a crime," Cotton came back dully. “We have to investigate all of them.” The preferential treatment she'd initially been given by the police had run out. She was now an emotional nuisance of a woman with an almost shaved head and an unhealthy obsession with a rock star.
When they'd gone she made herself the drink they hadn't wanted and watched the early evening WSN news. It was a thin news day and they were running stories about the Yanomami's battles against the gold miners in the Amazon and human rights in Burma. In other circumstances she might have been reporting on one of them.
It had never occurred to her before what a privilege it was to be listened to. As a reporter, with access to the world's television screens, she'd taken it for granted that millions of people would accept whatever she told them. Now she couldn't even get a couple of cops to give her a fair hearing.
Something Cotton had said jumped to the forefront of her mind. Kerinova had accused her of “pestering old colleagues and acquaintances”, he’d said. The only colleague of Gadden’s she’d talked to had been Kevin O’Brien in Maine. How had Kerinova known about that?
Had O’Brien told them?
Unlikely. Only one other person knew that they’d met.
“Kate, this is a friend of mine…Julie,” O’Brien had said as he’d introduced his young… very young…girl friend with the yellow Toyota.
Kate hesitated. Was she now seeing malevolence where none existed? Crazy people like her did that: they imagined things. Or…?
Finding the number O’Brien had given her she picked up the phone.
Bing Crosby and Louis Armstrong were on O’Brien’s voicemail in Shakeston, Maine. “Gone fishing, there’s a sign upon my door, Gone fishing, I ain’t working any more…” they sang, followed by an invitation to leave a message.
Gone fishing? O’Brien liked fishing.
She left a message asking him to call her and put down the phone.
Chapter Thirty Six
October 30:
There was only one piece of mail for her the following morning. It was a postcard showing the glossy, wet green of Connemara. She turned it over. The handwriting was round and neat.
“Dear Miss Merrimac
I don't know if it's important, but just before her death Frances told us she wanted to give up teaching and be admitted to an enclosed order. Perhaps we should have told you that.
I hope you didn't think we were uncaring of others when you came to see us, but it’s been very hard. We'll remember you in our prayers.
Yours sincerely
Nancy Cleary”
Kate reread the postcard. She didn't know whether it was significant either.
It was Saturday. While the kettle boiled she opened her laptop and looked at the BBC News online. A down-the-page report was saying that only Jesse Gadden’s staff and maybe a hundred heads of fan club would be admitted to the farewell concert which would be streamed from the little Pavilion Picture Palace in North Kensington. It was, in Gadden’s words going to be “a family affair”.
She was considering this when her mobile rang. It was Phil Bailey in Galway. "I’ve got a couple of things for you, Kate…”
“Yes?”
“Michael Lynch turned up last night. It seems Seb Browne paid him too well. He's been on a bender ever since.”
"Did he have any more on what happened the night Sister Grace died?"
"Nothing. He was at a boys’ boxing match and never saw Jesse Monaghan again. Seb got everything he had.”
She was disappointed. “Anything else?”
"Well, yes, actually….” There was a lilt of pride in the reporter’s voice. “It's Theresa Monaghan. Gadden’s mother. I've traced her for you.”
She reached for a pen.
“Her documents, anyway...case history, that sort of stuff. They were with the social welfare people down in Kerry. They'd put all the old files in the cellar of some disused council offices.”
"And they let you see them?" She was surprised.
"I told them I was from the pest control department, that the place was full of rats. They left me to it." He hesitated. "Kate, I think it's better if I scan and email you everything I have. Your man had a terrible start in life."
Ten minutes later she sat transfixed in her study as the attachment on Theresa Monaghan opened. Bailey had been right about Gadden's start in life. But there was something else.
Logging on to Google she typed “Reich’s Syndrome” into the search engine.
The old glitter ball spun uncertainly on its flex sending floaters of light across the walls and floors of the church hall. Standing by the door, Kate was watching a wet, Saturday afternoon's entertainment in Ealing. "I know a dark, secluded place, A place where no one knows your face. A glass of wine, a soft embrace..."
At a piano an elderly woman with a lilac rinse was playing and singing a selection of show tunes, while on the floor couples of old ladies, joints out of kilter, feet mostly out of time, tangoed back the years. In their chairs elderly men chuckled.
"It's called Hernando's Hideaway! Ole!" Around the room thin old lips parroted the chorus.
It had taken only a few hours to trace Mary Murray, former nursing auxiliary from County Kerry. Phil Bailey's email had supplied the name, adding that she'd retired and gone to live in England in the late-Eighties to be near her sister. Immediately Kate had begun working the connections: a last known home, churches, Catholic social clubs, Irish clubs, doing the chores like the cub reporter she'd never been. By three o’clock she'd had a current address. On days like this the internet was brilliant.
"Can you phone again next week?" the manager of the Sunnyside Retirement Home had said when she'd called. "We're having a tea dance today and we rely on Mary for the music."
"No, I can't," Kate had replied. A fifty pound facilities fee had opened the door.
"This is the lady from the television we told you about, Mary," a punky young carer with a gold ring clipped through her right nostril said, as she delivered Kate, tog
ether with a slice of angel cake and a cup of tea, to the pianist. "She wants to talk to you about when you were a nurse in Ireland."
The old lady smiled up from the piano. "Won't that be nice! Me on the TV. Lucky I've got my make up on today. How can I help you, dear?"
Kate was already clipping the camera into the tripod. Peering into the viewfinder, she focused and pressed to record. "I wanted to talk to you about something that happened in County Kerry in l979, Mary," she said. "Does the name Theresa Monaghan mean anything to you?"
"Nineteen seventy nine. Well now, that's going back a bit. Theresa Monaghan, you say. Did I work with her? There was a Monaghan family in Tralee. They had girls..." She looked vague.
Kate waited. They'd said on the phone that Mary's memory was patchy. "No. This Theresa Monaghan lived alone in a caravan. A neighbour was worried. You got a call..."
She saw instantly that the old lady had remembered. The crepe of her skin creased, and she quickly put down the angel cake. "Oh, that poor child..."
"You remember her?"
"I remember him. I'll never forget him. My God, you've never seen anything like it. It's a miracle he survived."
Kate held her gaze. The investigation by the Kerry social services department had been couched in careful, professional language. Mary Murray's scribbled nurse's report was what had shocked Phil Bailey. "You were the person to find them, weren't you?" she said.
"That's right. And when I got there, I couldn't get in. I could see in the window, though, through a gap in what passed for the curtains. The little fellow was there, peering up at me like a frightened little animal. Those eyes. Staring. He'd been locked in with her for days.
"I couldn't see her, but, even though the doors and windows were locked, there was a smell. I knew that smell. I got on my bicycle and cycled like a madwoman to a place where I knew there was a telephone to call the police.
